Action, knowledge, and the destruction of karma

Translated by Thothica

The {{guṇa|qualities of nature}}s, fixed in the body and senses, perform action for the sake of their own enjoyment. For one who knows 'I am not the doer, nothing is mine,' action does not bind at all.

The {{karma|action and its ripening}} done by another (i.e. prior) body, by which this [present] body has come into being, must necessarily be enjoyed [to the end]; its extinction is declared [to come] only through [its] being enjoyed.

Whatever {{karma|accumulated action}} was heaped up before the arising of {{jñāna|liberating knowledge}}, [once] licked by the flame-tongue of the fire of knowledge, becomes — like a seed scorched by fire — no longer capable of [producing] birth.

And as for whatever action is performed after the arising of knowledge — that too, indeed, does not cling to the doer, as water does not [cling to] a lotus-leaf.

'The mass of action here is performed by [the instruments of] speech, body, and mind' — so the awakened (buddha) declare. [Therefore:] '[Being] one alone, I am not the doer of these, I am not [the author] of their actions.'

From the destruction of the seed which is the fruit of action follows the destruction of birth — herein is no doubt. Having awakened thus, [the knower,] his darkness gone, shines, his nature being light, like the sun.

Just as a tuft of reed-down, blown up by the wind, scatters to the ten directions, so, through the knowledge of the truth concerning {{brahman|the absolute}}, do the [accumulated] actions of the knower of truth [scatter and vanish].

As clarified butter drawn out of milk, [even when] thrown back into it, does not [recombine] as before, so the conscious {{ātman / paramātman|Self}}, [once] separated from the {{guṇa|qualities}}s of {{prakṛti / mūlaprakṛti|nature}}, does not [revert to them].

Having dispelled the thicket of {{māyā|deluding power}} composed of the {{guṇa|qualities}}s, as the thousand-rayed [sun dispels] darkness, the {{puruṣa|conscious self}}, ranging within and without, becomes [homogeneous] like a solid block of rock-salt.

As the body and its limbs are clay alone — [merely] things born of clay's transformation — so the [whole world of] stationary and moving [beings], [though] non-dual ({{advaita|non-duality}}), appears as if dual.

From the one {{kṣetrajña|the field-knower, the embodied conscious self}} the many classes of field-knowers are born, as from a fire that has entered iron [come] showers of sparks on every side.

They, through the fault of association with the {{guṇa|qualities}}s, [are] as it were bound — like grains of corn by their own husks — and obtain [repeated] birth, so long as they are not burnt by the fire of {{jñāna|knowledge}}.

The three-stranded {{avidyā|nescience}} produces creation upon the consciousness-natured Self, which is all-pervading, [ever] established, the support of all; [yet] the {{ātman / paramātman|Self}} is nowhere touched by it.

As, in the case of the serpent [imagined] on a rope, there is no [real] cause and no [real] arising or perishing [of it], so here there is neither origination nor destruction of the world, nor any [real] cause [of it].

Eternally free of [all] connection with birth, destruction, going, coming, and defilement, the Self of all is, like space [present] in pots and the like, ever conjoined [with all things, yet untouched].

It is the limiting adjuncts ({{upādhi|limiting adjuncts}}s) that have the conjunction with the good and ill fruits of action, with pleasure and pain. Bondage [arises] from association with these — as [an innocent man is bound] through consorting with thieves, though he is no thief.

So long as the {{puruṣa|conscious self}} here has [the sense of its own] being, through association with the body, the {{guṇa|qualities}}s, the instruments, and their objects, just so long does it appear as if bound in transmigration by the nooses of {{māyā|deluding power}}.

Utterly bewildered by [the divisions of] mother, father, son, kinsfolk, wealth, enjoyment, and [their] partition, the creature is whirled about as if on a wheel made of birth, old age, and death.